Legislative overreach is a topic every FReeper should be familiar with. The idea that an elected body may do whatever it wants and the results will be fair/moral is absurd on its face.
During the Critical Period between the Revolutionary War and the Constitution, our young republics ran wild with popular, democratic legislatures. While the people had not refined their methods to legally steal from their neighbors outright, they got their legislators to pass laws that screwed creditors, confiscated property, inflated money, enacted ex-post facto laws, and generally impaired contracts to favor debtors.
These faults were corrected in the Constitution so often derided at this forum.
Similarly, we suffer today from too much democracy. For 99 years the Senate has not served as the lid on the House of Representatives it was designed to be. No, our Senators are vote grubbers like the Reps, only worse, because they have six year terms and imagine themselves minor gods.
Our Framers got it right in 1787 and the 16th, 17th amendments have been our undoing.
The American Revolution is dead.